S/V Adventurer

You may have read and/or heard that we are back in the States. It's a true story. We are here. We spent a couple of days with our good friends Mik and Christina who had sailed their mighty boat Split Crow up to Victoria to meet us. Walking...check. Museums...check. Big city tourists...check. A good time was had by all in the beautiful city of Victoria. After our last port of call in Canada with our good friends, we decided that a race was in order. A race across the Strait of Juan de Fuca to Port Angeles would be the perfect setting for such an event. Split Crow has been our sailing nemesis for as long as I can remember. We have sailed to many a port with them, always with a race along the way, and with many an insult being thrown out on the high seas. Usually I have some smart remark about how my Grandmother can walk faster than Split Crow or something about how my captaining skills are better than his captaining skills. You know the drill...friendly banter...

We are back on American soil...actually we are back in American waters and it's nice to be back. Canada was great to us but there is nothing like being home (we are always at home on the boat, but it's nice to have our home in our home country for a little bit). There are a few things that we have taken for granted while we were away on Phase 1 of our trip and there are few things that we really didn't want to come back to but I guess we get the good with the bad. We checked back into the States in Port Angeles which is an official port of entry for our great country. The first thing that I have noticed about being back in the States is the pace. Port Angeles is by by no means a big city but there is a pace that we are not used to. Even in this small town, the hustle and bustle is un-mistakable. People have somewhere to be and they need to get there now. We experienced a lot of “island time” in the Great White North. Canadians didn't seem to be in as m...

We are quickly coming to the end of Phase 1 of our trip, the Inside Passage. We didn't even come close to getting as far as we had thought we would. We thought that 3 ½ months would be plenty of time to get up to Alaska and see all that we needed to see on the way. Nope. We made it almost halfway to Alaska and only scratched the surface. There is just too much to see in the Inside Passage and 3 ½ months isn't near enough time to see it all. We have now started working our way south where Phase 2 of our mighty adventure will begin...more on Phase 2 in a minute. It took us 10 weeks to get to our furthest point north. It only took us one week to get most of the way back south. We put in some long travel days and covered a ton of ground and are now back in the Southern Canadian Gulf Islands. We have a few weeks left in this summer sailing season and have a few more spots that we are tying to see before we begin Phase 2. So that's what we are doing here...checki...

I have officially turned 40...yep, the big four-oh. I have been thinking about this big day for a little while now and to be honest, I have been a little bit afraid of the the big day. I've been trying to figure out why it's been bothering me to be out of my thirties and into my forties and I haven't really been able to come up with a good reason...other than it puts me one number closer to being in the dirt. 39 seemed sort of old...40 is old. I know, I know, it's not really that old. Some of my more elderly friends will say things like “oh, to be 40 again” or “I wish I was still 40”. Some of my younger friends will say things like “you're older than dirt!” or “did they even have dirt when you were a kid?” Well, I'm not actually older than dirt and yes dirt was around when I was a kid. I have to say that I feel pretty good for being 40. I now think that the gray in my beard is probably supposed to be there and I feel pretty lucky that the hair ...

A handful of weeks ago I wrote a little blurb about how we were having a tough time coming to grips with the fact that we have no place to be...ever. No plans. No commitments. Nothing. We are just us. Nothing more, nothing less. Everyday we get up and we look at stuff. That is our job...to look at stuff and then go somewhere else and look at more stuff. The problem with looking at stuff is that sometimes this stuff that we are looking at today looks just like the last stuff that we looked at yesterday.   Which brings me to where we are today. We have just spent 12 days in the Broughton's. This region is incredibly beautiful. It's the real-deal wilderness. Not quite Alaska but it's pretty darn close. There are tons of islands, inlets, sounds, and coves to explore. The problem that we had with most of these islands, inlets, sounds, and coves is that there is almost no place to get off of the boat. There are no roads and almost no trails (other than bear...

We are currently hanging out in Port McNeill on Vancouver Island.  There are gale warnings north of us and gale warnings south of us.  No safe exit strategy at the moment so we have been waiting out the weather for a few days while we decide which way to go.  Oddly enough, the weather where we are sitting is pretty benign. Sunny and calm.  It's only about 60 degrees out but it feels like a heat wave since we have been having lots of fog and days in the low 50's. Here are a few photos from our last couple of weeks. Fish tacos anyone??? Can you say foggy? Brenda next to the worlds tallest totem pole This is the big city up here...watch out for traffic!!! A First Nations burial ground at Alert Bay Our hiking weaponry...a fog horn and bear spray. Tons of old logging relics everywhere up here...right next to a great swimming hole. We are planning on heading out in the morning but aren't really sure where we are going as of yet. ...